


Some Things are Better Left Unsaid

by mpdghoul



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Time, Geralt's Canonically Massive Penis, Nervous/Exploratory Sex, Size Difference, Tender Sex, Tension, ciri is dressing a bird in this because It Felt Right, there are a lot of strong scents in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:27:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mpdghoul/pseuds/mpdghoul
Summary: “Ciri, what you asked of me, I–”“You hear the men.” she cut him off, matter-of-factly.“I– what?”“The men. You hear them. In the taverns, when they pass us on a path, if they’re foolish enough to try and attack us. They say a witcher can hear a rabbit in the underbrush in a neighboring village, surely you can hear them mutter as they go by.”Geralt dropped his gaze to the fire then. “I do.”“You said that one day my maturity would become apparent to strangers. Some strangers don’t particularly care one way or another.”Embarrassed tears, hot and angry, pricked at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t want my first time to be when one of those men make good on their threats!”Ciri makes a request of Geralt that he's conflicted about following through on.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 16
Kudos: 173





	Some Things are Better Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [witchoil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchoil/gifts).



> this is written from a beautiful prompt by a close friend for a friends-only fic exchange, who asked for some tender-but-weird Geralt/Ciri, with a heavy emphasis on their relationship with each other and them trying to understand what exactly that entails. 
> 
> I really wanted to capture with Ciri those really intense "first" feelings – of being young and trying to understand a strong attraction for the first time, the pure weight of that feeling; the hyperawareness of your own body in the same space as someone else's. and all of that tangled up with the strange relationship these two have by virtue of how and why they come together. Ciri (and this fic as a whole) acted as a really wonderful lens for me to explore those things.
> 
> I'm so so happy I got to write this, and feel very lucky that I have friends whose ideas push my writing and imagination in the very best ways.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Ciri looked up at the sun, mercifully setting on the eve of her thirteenth year. Judging by its position it’d been nearly two hours since she had given Geralt her request. The following hours had ticked by in tense silence as they made their way through brush and tree, the glow of the leaves growing ever brighter with the sky’s shift from blue to fiery orange and red.

Geralt looked up too, then, Ciri saw from the corner of her eye. He grunted.

“Probably best we make camp for the night.” Ciri’s throat dried up, and she nodded once, sharp and quick. Would he not even do her the dignity of denying her outright? Was this just going to be ignored, as if she were simply a naive child looking to fulfill some fantasy? She dismounted, rejection blistering in a way she didn’t quite have the words for. 

It felt doubly ridiculous, considering Geralt was the one who had told her to ask for anything she wanted.

_“You’re fast becoming a woman now, tell me what you’d like and if it’s within my power to do so, I’ll do it.”_

_“I stopped being a child the day I left my grandmother bloody and dying in our palace and I became nothing but the target of hunting sport. Another year of walking the earth doesn’t change that.”_

_Geralt coughed, an eyebrow quirking almost imperceptibly._

_“You’re vastly beyond your years, Ciri, but not all who see you realize that. One day it will become apparent to even strangers.”_

That had arguably been the most Geralt had spoken to her in the months they had been traveling together. In spite of that, she felt an undeniable closeness to him, something that she couldn’t describe as well as she wished. Perhaps it was how she would feel about her father, had she ever met him. It felt right, sitting across a fire from him. She felt safe, protected in a way she hadn’t since she had been lured out of Brokilon Forest. Her hesitancy around him had waned over time, walking on eggshells these days only when his silence felt especially heavy. 

She watched him for a moment as he started to build a fire, before taking two short strides to her horse and pulling the pheasant out of the sack at its side. The stench of death that had a tendency to set in quickly with animals hadn’t with this one yet, and Ciri’s nose was thankful as she set to work plucking it.

They sat in silence like that, Geralt building a fire and Ciri preparing their dinner, for some time. It wasn’t all that different than most nights, though Ciri registered the weight of their silence and continued to bite her tongue on all the things she wanted to say. Let Geralt be the one to bring it up. Let him give her the reason for his denial. 

Woodsmoke began to mingle with the tang of blood and metal as she set to work gutting the bird, and she wondered when precisely these smells had begun to make her hungry instead of nauseous. She looked up then, feeling the weight of a gaze on her with her small hand stuck in the end of the fowl, her fingers feeling for its heart, and met Geralt’s eyes, molten gold in the firelight. 

“Ciri, what you asked of me, I–”

“You hear the men.” she cut him off, matter-of-factly. 

“I– what?” 

“The men. You hear them. In the taverns, when they pass us on a path, if they’re foolish enough to try and attack us. They say a witcher can hear a rabbit in the underbrush in a neighboring village, surely you can hear them mutter as they go by.” 

Geralt dropped his gaze to the fire then. “I do.” 

“You said that one day my maturity would become apparent to strangers. Some strangers don’t particularly care one way or another.” 

“I don’t see what that has to do with what you’ve asked of me.” 

Ciri felt her face harden. Her grandmother used to chide her for the way her emotions played across her face like an open book, and despite her best efforts time and age had done little to change that about her. She felt a flush rise in her cheeks, angry that she needed to justify herself to him. 

“I don’t want my first time to be when one of those men make good on their threats!” Embarrassed tears, hot and angry, pricked at the corners of her eyes. Her hands held the pheasant’s entrails and she could almost feel Geralt tense up, the air around them taut and hot like a whip at its furthest extension, the cracking moment of contact. She blinked the tears away, determined not to let them betray her any more than they already had. 

Geralt stood up then, his figure massive and towering against the black of forest in the night. He crossed over to her, taking half the time it would’ve taken her to do the same. He sat down, hunching his back to be almost even with her face, though Ciri still had to crane her neck just slightly to meet his eyes. She could see the stubble along his square jaw, could see where the veins in his neck pulsed and traveled below his shirt, out of sight. The scent of blood and fire mixed with his, leather and sweat from skin that had only just begun to breathe after being trapped under armor all day. 

He didn’t say a word, covering her hand with his (nearly twice its size, she thought) and taking the entrails from her, disposing of them and pulling his water skin from around his waist.

“Clean your hands.” Silently he finished prepping the fowl, skewering it with a sharpened stick and placing it over the fire as he began salting the liver and kidneys. 

The water felt cool against the heat of the fire, and it felt good to wash the blood, drying and tacky, from her hands. She raised them up to her face and breathed in, the metallic scent still lingering, overpowering the smell of Geralt’s sweat and leather. 

She heard him breathe out then, a _huff_ of air, and she looked up. He was still close to her, his knee a hair’s breadth from knocking into her own. The organs were smoking over the fire, and without looking at her, he finally began to speak.

“My job as your protector is to make sure men like that can never follow through on their threats. Not be the one to fulfill them.” 

“You’re not – Geralt, I _want_ this.” She could feel the static crackling between their limbs, hated the tension with which she held her knee to ensure that it didn’t cross the whisper thin boundary that currently separated them. “I want to be given this, not have it taken from me. You’re… you can do that. You can give, instead of take. Give me this.” 

Geralt’s eyes widen so slightly Ciri nearly convinces herself it’s a trick of the light, and they sit in silence for a while longer, Ciri painfully aware of each movement, each twitch of her body, how close they are to touching. 

It gets to a point, chewing in silence, that Ciri thinks she’s either going to explode or her leg will cramp up from the sheer muscle force she’s exerting to keep it away from Geralt. Mid-bite, Geralt spitting a bone out of his mouth, she lets go. Her knee falls through that fraction of space and it feels stupidly anticlimactic as it rests there, as if her hands didn’t feel clammy and her heart wasn’t racing in a way she didn’t really understand. Geralt’s brow furrows for a moment and Ciri swears she sees his face redden a little, but she doesn’t say anything. He pushes his knee into hers, gently, and she felt the dull ache that had planted itself like a weight in her chest ease, if only slightly. 

Ciri lays out her bedroll a few feet away from the dying embers of the fire, her stomach fluttering nervously as she watches Geralt do the same. Next to her. Not across the fire, not above her head, next to her. He still hasn’t said anything, and she lays down, not really sure what to do. She had said her piece, and it was, as it had been that whole day, Geralt’s turn to say his. She wasn’t entirely surprised that it was simply silence. 

He lays down as well, his chest to her back, warmth radiating off his body, and it was then that she felt the weight of his arm, gently settling in to rest on top of hers, across her torso. She freezes, dares not move for fear of making him withdraw. Was this…? Was this him, agreeing? Or was it him simply doing as much as he felt comfortable, drawing the line at this touch that felt both incredibly intimate and somehow still lacking in what she needed from him? She suppressed a groan of frustration, wishing desperately that he would say something. Refusal, she thinks, would be better than this. While doing her best to move as little as possible, she leans into his touch, as if settling back into a comfortable chair near a fireplace in winter. She moves her hand to cover his, slowly, and she feels a sudden tug at her arm, pulling her towards him. If she were any less awake, she’d think she was dreaming. She rolls over, following the pull of his hand, and upon facing him realizes just how close they are. His hand travels up her arm, pausing at her shoulder and then her neck, wrapping around the back of her head and the pressure of his palm on the base of her skull feels both comforting and unnerving at the same time. 

He doesn’t say a word. Barely breathes, as he presses his forehead to hers. She pulls a breath in, sharp and quick, feeling the heat of him against her. An eternity goes by, their pulses racing each other to some distant finish line, before Geralt finally speaks, his voice gravelly. 

“Because I vowed to protect you, Ciri.” and with that she feels herself being rolled onto her back, with a witcher straddling her. 

⥈

If Ciri had found Geralt’s stature to be somewhat intimidating from a mere breath apart, the feeling was only exacerbated with him on top of her. She wondered if this was how a small sparrow felt trapped underneath the paw of a wildcat: some acceptance, some perverse pleasure even, in being smaller and weaker, in ceding control. Her hands, dwarfed by the vastness of his torso, traveled along the muscle there, his chest, feeling his heartbeat and shallow breathing before moving down, following the taper of his waist. She felt his eyes on her but dared not meet them – she was terrified (only a little) that if she did, the reality of what was happening would come rushing at her. This would change things, cogs that were already in the process of turning as she felt her stomach flip and tighten in a way she had never experienced before. As her hands reached Geralt’s waistband, her fingers running along the fabric there lightly, tentatively, she felt him release a shaky puff of air onto the crown of her head. She looked up then, instinctively, letting out a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. Her hands rush up without a thought, cupping his face and _oh_ , her fingertips barely reach his cheekbones, his jaw firm and rough with stubble underneath the base of her palms. There, there was the reason she hadn’t wanted to meet his gaze. She could sense the conflict he felt, could feel it in the way he looked at her, could feel the uncertainty in his trembling limbs.

“Are you sure?” his voice was low, gruff, and if he asked her again she was scared she’d take it all back. And she couldn’t do that, not now. 

“Kiss me, Geralt. Please.” she pleaded and his face softened, his lips parted and he pushed his forehead against hers once more, pausing there, as if accepting who they were becoming before taking her by the mouth.

_This._

All the boys in the streets of her childhood echoing remarks they didn’t understand, the men at court and their lewd jokes, the matter-of-fact talk from her grandmother, even the threat of something both unknown and familiar from wicked men couldn’t have prepared her for this. Ciri felt her body melt. Whatever hesitation, whatever tension had coiled in her belly fastly unwound itself and was replaced by something hungrier, urging her forward. She sighed, soft and bright, into Geralt’s mouth. Her hand creeped up the side of his face, aware that if she moved too fast it might cause him to stop, before gently pushing it into his winter white hair. There was nothing but sensation, the weight of his body on hers and the gentle push of his lips. She could smell the ever-lingering woodsmoke and leather armor, the oil he used to make it soft and gleaming in afternoon sunlight. The smell of the earth was trapped in his hair, tree bark and air mingled with his sweat. 

They broke apart then, and Ciri felt the absence of his mouth in the same way she felt when she had dove under water and held her breath for the first time. Like her body was being deprived of something she had never realized just how badly she needed. 

Geralt lifted his hand, brushing it against her arm, trailing his fingers along her collarbone delicately as if he was afraid of breaking her. He stopped at the lacing of her blouse, and met her eyes again. 

“You’re–?”

“Sure? Geralt, you need to stop asking.” 

“I don’t know,” he paused, “what this is – if what we’re doing, if it’s okay or–”

“I don’t know either.” Ciri whispered, her voice finally finding its footing. “But I know it’s what I want.” 

Geralt nodded once, grunting in understanding. and began pulling, slowly loosening the laces of her shirt. The fabric fell off of her shoulder, Ciri’s small breasts hardening and raising with gooseflesh from the night air and anticipation. Geralt tilted his head, his fingertips soft against her, the fabric of her shirt still between them, and began to place sure, lingering kisses along her neck and collarbone, making her breath hitch in her throat. She could still feel his heart stuttering in his chest, and found some small comfort in that tremulousness – these waters, murky as they were, were ones they were exploring together. 

He sat up and back, his figure blocking out the moonlight for a brief minute as he took her shirt by the hem and as she realized his goal, Ciri raised her arms up to aid him. 

The fabric peeled away from her skin like the topmost layer of an onion, as if it were never meant to be there in the first place. She shivered in the night air, her wind-chafed skin glowing in the blue-white from the moon, unsure of what to do with her hands, resisting her initial urge to cover herself with them. 

She knew how she must look, waifish, lean, her body not yet blossoming the way one does when womanhood is no longer just a word, a shadow on the horizon. Her hip bones protrude and her breasts are mere buds at the summit of her ribcage. Geralt hasn’t moved since taking off her shirt, towering over her, and she squirms under his scrutiny. She nearly does move her hands until he mercifully moves his first, hesitantly, like she’s a rabbit he doesn’t want to spook. 

He cups her jaw in his hand, mimicking her earlier gesture except his hand nearly covers the entire right side of her face. She turns into it and breathes him in again, the smell of pheasant blood persistent and her own skin mixed with his on the palm of his hand. She feels him relax, and a trail of gooseflesh follows his hand as he traces it down the side of her body, coming to rest at the base of her hip. 

Ciri raises her hand up to his torso, feels the hard lines of his stomach and drifts her hand further down, seeing the bulge at his crotch and wanting more. She pauses, hovering over it and looks up at him, meets his eyes and they are wide; the usual, unnatural gold she is so used to has been replaced by a dark silver in the moonlit-stained darkness. She rests her hand not on his crotch but instead on the waistband of his pants, tugging them down gently. He lets out a surprised grunt, takes his hand away from her hip and places it over the one she has at his waist. Together, without breaking their matched gaze, they hitch Geralt’s trousers down, and Ciri lets out a short gasp as his cock is freed, still sheathed in skin, bobbing gently in the night air. 

She had seen a penis before. There were plenty of drunks, perverts, idiotic boys from her childhood in Cintra – Geralt’s was not the first she had seen. But it was, whether by virtue of the situation at hand or otherwise, the biggest. Almost instinctively she reaches her fingertips out, before drawing them back, briefly to ask, “May I?” and she hears Geralt’s breath hitch, not unlike hers a few minutes ago, as he nods, returning his hand back to her hip before traveling the short distance to her stomach, pressing down every so gently below her belly button, at the edge of her pelvis. It makes her stomach flip and her heart begin to gallop and she’s not entirely sure why, but it's then that she notices the warmth between her legs; pure, damp heat. She wraps her hand around him, before she can lose the nerve and start questioning the very thing she asked for. She gives him a gentle, experimental tug and Geralt groans, low and quiet as she feels him twitch and lengthen under her hand.

When his hand moves past the waistband of her pants and underwear she shudders, his fingers hot and rough with callouses, still pressing on the space above her pubic bone. His fingers move further then, past the barely-there dusting of hair the earliest stages of puberty have given her, and tentatively, she feels him press against her folds. She gasps, a jolt running through her body like lightning when she hears Geralt groan louder in response. 

“I’m– Ciri–” 

“Please,” she breathes, pushing herself onto his fingertips, her featherlight touch on his cock tightening instinctually when she feels him grow somehow _more_ under her hand. 

He pulls his hand away and she whimpers at the loss, but cuts off quickly when she feels him grab her around the waist, lifting her up to more easily take off her bottoms. 

“You’ll need some,” he pauses, as if searching for the right words, “preparation, for me.” his mouth twists and his hand returns to her opening once more. She feels warm, wet, in a way that she had only felt here and there and only recently, in the last year or so – the feeling is still new and unfamiliar, but Geralt pushes past her lips, knowingly, and she squirms at how full she feels with just one of his fingers inside her. 

He kisses the side of her neck, her forehead, her lips again, his breath heavy and warm. “I’m going to add another. Is that… okay?” He looks at her and she only has the strength to nod, biting at her lip. It’s good, she thinks, better than she could have imagined, with him or anyone else. Was it supposed to feel this good? She feels his middle finger nudge its way in, and she huffs out a breath of air, and feels his fingers run over a ridge inside her that makes her keen loudly into the cool night breeze. She opens her eyes, chest heaving, and Geralt’s face is a flurry of emotions she can’t quite place. But when he meets her eyes, his face softens in a way she’s not sure she’s ever seen before tonight, and she almost can’t believe it's the same man. 

Ciri’s lost to the passing of time but realizes, through a haze, that a third finger has been added, and she can feel how easily Geralt is moving in and out of her, can feel her own wetness on the insides of her thighs. 

“Geralt– Geralt please, I’m ready.” Her words are almost cut off by another sharp intake of breath, pushing herself down on his fingers to drive her words home, before he can ask if she’s sure again. 

He lines himself up with her and leans down so that their faces are just a whisper apart, her legs wrapped around his waist. Ciri looks at him, their eyes matched, filled with words left unspoken, and he moves, gently yet surely, into her, before either of them can take it back. 

And for a moment, it hurts. It’s pressing, filling in a way even Geralt’s fingers couldn’t make up for. But then the burning stretch is replaced by a warm, engulfing heat, and Ciri feels herself nudging Geralt with her ankles, urging him forward with her legs. 

It feels explosive and overwhelming and Ciri couldn’t imagine it with anyone else, can barely even believe that it’s happening as it is. She groans into Geralt’s shoulder, the noise lost in the thick of his muscle.

She feels Geralt shudder and the tightened coil in her stomach is back as he thrusts into her, filling her again and again. It could be moments or the stretches of an hour when she feels him spill into her, hot and sticky and satisfying in a way she can’t put words to. 

They lay there for a moment, and heat comes rushing over Ciri as she feels the puddle underneath her and Geralt’s sticky-sweet smelling release dripping out of her, both of them covered in a sheen of sweat, raising their flesh in the cool night air. 

Geralt looks at her, a soft uncertainty she feels matched in her own eyes. He wraps his hand around hers, and her nerves are jangling – she thought they would’ve quieted when this was over, but they’ve suddenly kicked back into overdrive. 

“Geralt, I–” 

“I know.” He sounds almost resigned when he says it, and she knows he understands. “We’ll… we’ll figure it out.” It’s just shy of being a question; one, Ciri hopes, she knows how to answer.

“I know we will.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments n kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
